Eileen Gu told of grandmother's death after winning Olympic gold - ESPN

LIVIGNO, Italy — By taking chances, Eileen Gu is building a sport. She's winning medals.

Yet on a sunny Sunday at the Olympics where she defended her title on the halfpipe, maybe the best prize of all was knowing her grandma would be proud.

That's why her tears flowed freely.

Not long after the victory gave her a record-breaking third Olympic gold medal in freeskiing, Gu learned her grandmother, Guozhen Feng, had died.

«She was a steamship,» Gu said. «This woman commanded life, and she grabbed it by the reins, and she made it into what she wanted it to be.»

It's the way Gu, the 22-year-old — born in America but competing for her mother's homeland of China — likes to approach skiing, school, life and everything she touches.

«She inspired me so much,» Gu said. «The last time I saw her before I came to the Olympics, she was very sick, so I knew that this was a possibility. I didn't probably say that I was going to win, but I did promise her that I was going to be brave. She's been brave.»

Gu knows she has naysayers and knows what to say to them

Gu has had to exhibit a certain amount of bravery, too, over her young life.

There's bravery on the mountain, where she puts her health (and her life) on the line with every jump. Then, there's the will of steel she needs to deal with her world off the slopes.

Barely a day has passed at either of her two Olympics when Gu doesn't get asked about the country she competes for almost as often as her freeskiing.

Not a day passes, either, where she doesn't lean into the same message she's been delivering for years: «If people disagree with me, if they have other skill sets, which I'm sure they do, then I encourage them to direct it elsewhere,» she said. «To make the world better in their